In recent years, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have garnered significant attention for their ability to control the phase shifts in reflected signals. By intelligently adjusting these phases, RIS can establish seamless direct paths between communication devices obstructed by obstacles, eliminating the need for forwarding and significantly reducing system overhead associated with relaying. This capability is crucial in multi-hop ad hoc networks requiring multiple relay steps. Consequently, the concept of incorporating multi-hop RIS into wireless multi-hop relay networks has emerged. In this paper, we propose a novel network model where each UAV communication node is equipped with a RIS, facilitating seamless connections in multi-hop relay wireless networks. We analyze the performance of this model by integrating RIS-assisted physical layer modeling into the seamless connection network framework and conducting a detailed comparative analysis of RIS-assisted and conventional connections. At the medium access layer, we introduce a RIS-DCF MAC protocol based on the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF), modeling the medium access process as a two-hop access scenario. Our results demonstrate that the seamless connections and diversity gain provided by RIS significantly enhance the performance of multi-hop relay wireless networks.

翻译：近年来，可重构智能表面（RIS）因其调控反射信号相移的能力而备受关注。通过智能调整这些相位，RIS能够在受障碍物阻隔的通信设备间建立无缝直达路径，从而无需转发并显著降低中继相关的系统开销。该能力在需要多跳中继步骤的移动自组织网络中至关重要。因此，将多跳RIS集成到无线多跳中继网络的概念应运而生。本文提出一种新颖的网络模型，其中每个无人机通信节点均配备RIS，以促进多跳中继无线网络中的无缝连接。通过将RIS辅助的物理层建模融入无缝连接网络框架，并对RIS辅助连接与传统连接进行详细对比分析，我们评估了该模型的性能。在介质访问控制层，我们基于IEEE 802.11分布式协调功能（DCF）提出了RIS-DCF MAC协议，将介质访问过程建模为双跳接入场景。实验结果表明，RIS提供的无缝连接与分集增益显著提升了多跳中继无线网络的性能。